Produced by Malcolm Farmer
My thanks are due to those editors who have so kindly permitted me to
reprint the following pages:—"The Field-Play" appeared in Time;
"Bits of Oak Bark" and "The Pageant of Summer" in Longman's Magazine;
"Meadow Thoughts" and "Mind under Water" in The Graphic; "Clematis
Lane," "Nature near Brighton," "Sea, Sky, and Down," "January in the
Sussex Woods," and "By the Exe" in The Standard; "Notes on Landscape
Painting," in The Magazine of Art; "Village Miners," in The
Gentleman's Magazine; "Nature and the Gamekeeper," "The Sacrifice to
Trout," "The Hovering of the Kestrel," and "Birds Climbing the Air," in
The St. James's Gazette; "Sport and Science," in The National
Review; "The Water-Colley," in The Manchester Guardian; "Country
Literature," "Sunlight in a London Square," "Venice in the East End,"
"The Pigeons at the British Museum," and "The Plainest City in Europe,"
in The Pall Mall Gazette.
Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch,told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial thehour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt likesummer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though theywere. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separatescent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of grass orleaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little inthe middle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap andfreshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they haddrawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness ofthe air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes—the commonrushes—were full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of earlygrasses growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthornboughs were shaken by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in amongthe grass, and leaves and grass-blades touched. Smooth round stems ofangelica, big as